Table of Contents

Federal Court Cases: Integrated Data Base, 2010 (ICPSR 30401)

Principal Investigator(s):
Federal Judicial Center

Summary:

The purpose of this data collection is to provide an official
public record of the business of the federal courts. The data
originate from district and appellate court offices throughout
the United States. Information was obtained at two points in
the life of appellate and civil cases: filing and
termination. The termination data (archived in this data
collection) contain information on both filing and
terminations, while the pending data (archived as a separate
data collection) contain only filing information on the most
recent pending cases. The unit of analysis for the appellate
and civil terminations data is the case. This collection also
contains data on criminal cases in federal courts. However, the
unit of analysis for the criminal data is the defendant, and a
defendant can be included in several cases.

The purpose of this data collection is to provide an official
public record of the business of the federal courts. The data
originate from district and appellate court offices throughout
the United States. Information was obtained at two points in
the life of appellate and civil cases: filing and
termination. The termination data (archived in this data
collection) contain information on both filing and
terminations, while the pending data (archived as a separate
data collection) contain only filing information on the most
recent pending cases. The unit of analysis for the appellate
and civil terminations data is the case. This collection also
contains data on criminal cases in federal courts. However, the
unit of analysis for the criminal data is the defendant, and a
defendant can be included in several cases.

Guidelines for Applying for Restricted Data

Before you begin an application you will need the following information to complete the form

General Requirements:

appointment at research institution; appointment must be under the jurisdiction of the receiving institution

degree requirements (possibly doctorate)

Must be submitted:

project description

IRB approval

approved security plan

roster of research and IT staff who can access or view the data or computer where data are hosted.

confidentiality pledges for all people on roster

Some require:

CV's

Access to these data is restricted. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete a Restricted Data Use Agreement, specify the reasons for the request, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research.

Any public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public.
Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

Starting with the year 2001, each year of data for Federal Court Cases Integrated Data Base is released by ICPSR as a separate study number. Data for the years 1970-2000 can be found in FEDERAL COURT CASES: INTEGRATED DATA BASE, 1970-2000 (ICPSR 8429).

Starting with year 2008, the appellate pending and civil pending data are archived as a separate data collection.

Methodology

Time Method:
Cross-sectional

Data Source:

computerized court records

administrative records

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Created variable labels and/or value labels.

Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release: 2011-11-11

Version History:

2015-08-20 The civil data were updated with new data supplied by the principal investigators.

2012-11-26 The docket numbers were recoded to 9-fill to protect the confidentiality of individuals involved in the case.

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